baby steps!

Baby steps!

Okay, so. Like, some attempt at writing the weekend up. First, let me say, MY FRIENDS ARE NUTS. I mean that in the *best* possible way. *laugh* I must once more thank them for FLYING ME DOWN TO CALIFORNIA ON A WHIM (actually on a plane), which caused another of my friends to say today, “Do you fly down to California _every_ time James plays at 14 Below?” Well, thus far, since I left Alaska, I _have_ in fact flown down to CA every time James has played at 14 Below, except the time that nobody went ’cause Deen was in Alaska. (Well. Probably some other people went, but they weren’t us, so they don’t count.)

So I got on an airplane at 12:40AM on Friday morning. As far as I’m concerned, about 2 days passed this weekend: Thursday, and then, like, Saturday. Or maybe Sunday. It’s hard to say. Anyway. I did try — and sort of succeed — to sleep on the airplane, so I wasn’t as totally useless on Friday as I thought I might be. Which is good.

There was an exciting moment where the Sacramento airport was all fogged in, and they were talking about routing us to Oakland, and I had no way to get ahold of Sarah who was waiting in the Sac airport, and so I was going, “Eeee!” and thinking real hard and fast. I thought: okay, if they re-route us, then Delta will surely be helpful and will be willing to page Sarah at the Sac airport and tell her that I’ve been routed to Oakland and I will tell her that I’m going to just get on the train to Tamien and walk over to Aberdeen’s house because Deen lives 235 feet from the train station and *eee* if she sees that I’ve been routed to Oakland she won’t *drive* to Oakland will she? no she couldn’t be that foolish at least I don’t think so well I’ll do what I can and I’ll find a way to get ahold of Deen and have her call Sarah and–

But then the fog cleared up and I landed in Sac anyway. :) We drove down to the Bay Area, geeking about Maddock pretty much the whole way, collected Angie and Sarah gave her the pooka of which I do not have a photo! Snif! But it is a blue and white and other blues fuzzy pooka and it’s awfully cute and Angie SHRIEKED a lot and that was quite satisfying. :)

And then we went to get Emily and then we DROVE and DROVE and DROVE and DROVE and DROVE and then we DROVE some more. And we listened to musicals and we talked and talked and talked and TALKED and talked and listened to some other stuff and talked and talked and talked and then we stopped for dinner and then we drove some more and eventually we got to the hotel.

Which was just as nice as it was last time. Plus, we were exactly 43 feet away from the hot tub. So at midnight we all crept out and went hot tubbing and then splished quietly in the pool and then more hot tubbing and then more splishing and then staggering towards the beds and lying around giggling helplessly until 1:30 in the morning, at which time there was Suddenly Sleep.

Saturday was an extension of Friday, or possibly Thursday. I’m not sure it was actually its own day. We got up at a surprisingly reasonable hour — 8:30ish — and managed to get all 4 girls through the shower in about an hour, and went down to breakfast at about 10. This was sort of silly, given that we were scheduled for lunch at the Chart House at 1, but we were VERY HUNGRY, and the breakfast at the Courtyard Marriott in Marina del Rey is quite good, and — right. There was breakfast.

Then we did some shopping, which Sarah covered nicely in her writeup; to summarize, there was a lot of Shopping Face. And then with the Shopping Face firmly in place, we went to — oh. For some reason, we ended up buying ALL the makeup. Girls are weird. Anyway. We went to the Chart House, where we stood around outside for a few minutes admiring the waves (mostly Angie admired the waves, and shrieked, and swooned, and I obligingly recorded a few seconds of waves crashing and then some more seconds of me blathering, the former of which was for Angie and the latter of which was unintentional but caused high hilarity when discovered. :) (It’s a .mov file and my computer wants to run it with QuickTime. I have *no idea* how well/if it will run on other systems. Let me know if it sucks the big hairy moose whang.)

We waited around quite a while at the Chart House, hoping Nichole, Sarah’s agent/friend, would show up, but something must have come up, because she didn’t make it. So we ordered lunch (the smallest lunches we’ve ever ordered there, due to the whole having eaten slightly less than 3 hours earlier) and the people at the next table over kept mentioning my name, except *they* were talking about Katie Kerowack, however her name is spelled. And it was very yummy. Lunch, not the people at the next table over. Sarah and Deen and I all had clam chowder and Angie had a chopped spinach salad that she thought was the oddest looking salad she’d ever had, but that it was very very good. And Deen ordered the calamari and ate all the tentacles. o.o And, of course, there were Hot Lava Cakes or whatever they’re called, which are *appallingly* good desserts. So all was well.

After that we drove through Topanga Canyon, which, we are pleased to announce, is still as lovely as it was last year, and went shopping at the um somewhere that we went shopping last year, too. This involved more Shopping Face and quite a lot of nerves and eventual purchases, including a cute tank toppy thing I bought for Angie as a birthday present. It says ‘She-Devil’ on it, or something. It’s cute. :) And then we had hair disaster, and — well. Okay, not *really*, but we went to get our hair styled, and Deen and Sarah came out looking quite spif and the lady I got shaved half my head. o.o

I went in and said “I want the back to be short enough that I can’t grab it, and the same over the ears.” Well, this is what I ended up with. Hello. BoyKit, anyone? Eeee. I mean, it’s not bad, but she turned me back to the mirror when one half of my head was done and my HAIR was SHAVED an INCH over the top of my ear! I went, “Oh my GOD!” mentally, but, well, it was too late, you know? Nothing to be done. So she finished.

And then she shaved my face.

I shit you not. She took her clippers and she shooped off all the little fine hairs along my cheeks and jaw. I still can’t decide exactly how I feel about this. I’m either amused or offended. Or maybe both… I mean … she shaved my FACE! *splutter*

After being shaved (!) (which, incidentally, made Angie and Emily laugh a *lot*, because (I think) of my expression), and after Sarah’s hair was done, we trundled off back to the hotel, where there was panic about clothing, but I think I may put all that in another entry. :)